How Commenting May Help You Build Your Credibility And Traffic For Your Blog

Comments are one of the most important factors in building relationships with other bloggers. But they are also amazing in getting traffic and in building your credibility as a blogger.

I don’t remember who, but someone told, that “comments are blood of the blogs”. And I agree with that statement. What’s more, these days comments are even most important, than some years (or even months) ago.

You should have comments to prove, that your site isn’t dead. On the other hand, comments on other sites, which link to your blog, help you in SEO and getting traffic to your blog.

This blog, NoPassiveIncome.com is relatively new blog. I started it on the beginning of this year, but in reality, I concentrate on it since one month. To have a lot of visitors and huge traffic, creating quality content isn’t enough today – you must promote it. And since one month, I’m adding each day at least few comments on blogs related to mine.

You may ask – is it working for you?

For me it is. For example on 1st May my Alexa rank was about 8 000 000. Now it’s about 1 500 000. Maybe it’s not first 10 000 (where I want to be in May 2013), but the range of growth is enough for me. The amount of visitors is also growing each day, and some of them are making comments on my blog. Nice, because one of my goals for this blog was, and still is, building my credibility in “English-speaking blogosphere”. And you build your credibility as a blogger for instance via creating relationship with other bloggers.

Below I’ll show you in few points, how to get traffic from comments on other sites, and how to get more comments on your blog

Comments on other sites

1) Make your comment useful

Your comment must be useful for other readers. Otherwise, why they should be interested in visiting your blog? What’s more, comments like this “great post” don’t give any additional value to the discussion – so blog owner may, in the worst case, don’t accept it…

2) If you don’t know, what you want to say, don’t comment

Sometimes you want to comment, but you totally don’t understand the topic, or don’t know what to say. In that case, silence is better, than writing something stupid…

3) Make your comment as a person

Maybe from SEO point of view it’s not the best solution, but if you want to build your credibility, you must sign with your real name, or alternatively with your blog name or address. If possible, for commenting purpose use your email, which is active on Gravatar – it is more personal. Besides, administrator or blog owner see, that you are a human, not a bot 🙂

4) Try to be first commentator

If you want to be visible not only by author of the article or Google bot, please try to be first commentator or at least in top 10 of first commentators. If the post, on which you are commenting, has hundreds of comments, nobody (or almost nobody) will read comments at the bottom of the page. But be careful – some blogs have another commenting system, where last comments are on the top (just below post). You should try to comment on sites like this not only as a first commentator, but also some days after post was published

Comments on your blog

There is a lot blogs and websites, where people can comment. Why they should comment on your site? How to get a lot of comments since first day of blogging? Please read these tips for getting more comments on your site

1) Make people reason for comment

If you want to have great response on your post, write for users. It must be quality content not only for you, but also (or maybe first of all) for your readers

2) Ask for interaction

At the end of your each post, you should place call to action statement. It may looks like:

“And what about you? What do you think about these tips? Or maybe you have your own tips about comments? Please share them with us!” It really helps in getting comments

3) Answer on comments

If someone took pains to make comment on your site, you must answer him or her. If some questions are repeated in a lot of comments – you may prepare blog post with answer on these questions, and in your future answers for the comments, you will link back to that post

4) Make it easy to comment

Sometimes I read great article on someone’s blog and I want to comment. But there is difficult captcha, requirements for login via Facebook or something similar, which makes commenting very hard. Please make it as easy as possible

5) Fight with spammy comments

Of course there are always pros and cons of simplifying your comment system. If your site is easy for commenting for users, it’s also easy for commenting for spammers. But you could use some tools or plugins to fight with spammers – for example Akismet It’s very simple to use, and for noncommercial use it may be even free of charge.

6) Install some plugins, which may add some more value for commenting on your site

Today I turn on 2 plugins on my blog – below you can find them. I suppose, that they will help me in getting more comments, but we will see

1. Commentluv

commentluv is a WordPress plugin, which reward commentators by placing a clickable link to their last post on the blog. There are some paid versions of commentluv, but basic version is free of charge

2. Top Commentators

Top Commentators is also a plugin for WordPress, which award your most active commentators. You may set here, how many top commentators will be shown, what is your “reset period” or if your links will be dofollow or not. For this blog, I set this plugin to show top 5 commentators, with dofollow links, but only on homepage.

And how do you comment on other sites? Or maybe you have your own magic formula, in getting a lot of comments? Please describe it below.

Comments

Commenting on other Blogs maybe can build relationship with other Bloggers but not for me because I have leaved more than 500 comments on other blogs in my niche, but no one came back to my blog for comment:S

Let’s talk about you for example. I have leaved at least 7 to 8 comments on your blog till now and read at least 20 of your blog’s posts, but you never clicked on my picture to find your who the fuck I’m and what the fuck is my blog about? Right?:P

Hi Ehsan,
I visited your blog, what’s more – I commented some posts – so it’s working for you too 🙂
But it’s not the case – if you comment so much, maybe you should interact with them too – write guest post for them, retweet their post, email them – it should work.

Hi Chris, Thanks for your reply. I want to write guest post for some blogs but I really don’t know how to successfully submit guest post for Problogger, DailyBlogTips etc. I have sent a guest post to both of them but they never accepted my guest post and they even didn’t replied me the reason of rejection:S

Are you on Facebook? please add me on Facebook I want to ask something from you by direct chatting with you. my name on Facebook “Ehsan Ullah Khoshbakht”

Hi Christ, I love to read your articles. Especially this one. After reading this, I then reflect to myself that I am still not good in blogging. Why? because I was lazy to comment. But Now, I will try my best to show to the world that I am a Blogger.
🙂 by Life is To Give and To Share

Great post! I totally agree that comments help to build credibility for a site. I like the statement “comments are the blood of blogs”, very true and a good way to show that your blog is active.

I mainly leave comments, not only on posts that I like, but on blogs that I want to get to know the blogger. I’ve made plenty of contacts by leaving comments and also by people leaving comments on my site too. I think (can’t quite remember) that you left a comment on my site and we got chatting that way. Now we know each other and visit each other’s sites quite regularly. That wouldn’t have happened without comments

I agreed with you. Commenting helps to earn the huge traffic.But it happens only when the comments approved. So always a risk factor of the time wasting.Can you tell me some more better ways of the commenting.

leaving comments in once blog /website is like leaving trails so that somehow, one way or another, some visitors of that site may pick up the trail that leads to your site. I have known this to be a very helpful to bloggers who wants to increase their traffic.

This is very true and we can’t ignore the benefits of commenting on other blogs as well as getting comments. I do agree with your tips here. While writing posts, we too need to make it easier for the people to comment.

Inspire with all these, I’ve created a facebook group of active bloggers in blogging, seo and social network niche. Please visit my CommentLuv link if you too are interested to join the group. Working united really helps to enjoy success quicker 🙂

I’d never really considered the benefit of comments on my blog before reading your posts today. I receive a lot of spam comments, so I previously just considered comments to be a nuisance. I’ll be changing my mode of operandi from now on. Thank you 🙂

Getting people to comment at my blog is not easy even when I use a CTA. I am wondering if that is because my subject matter (tax law) is technical and people are afraid to jump in with comments. Do you think this could be the case? If so, what should I try to do to increase comments?